


Brightest and Best

by calliope85



Category: Biggles Series - W. E. Johns
Genre: Intercrural Sex, M/M, Public Schoolboys, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-06
Updated: 2012-09-06
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:12:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calliope85/pseuds/calliope85
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles Bigglesworth seemed to Algy over-emphatic, an over-exposed photograph of a well-know subject: too tall, too broad, his hair too fair and his eyes too definitely blue. There were ways in which that did and didn't matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brightest and Best

“Biggles is in town, by the way.”

Algy paused with the pint-glass part way to his lips, and raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Not unless he’s managed to cop a Blighty and get himself shipped back here with quite extraordinary speed, considering I left him in France yesterday morning.”

“Oh – not _that_ Biggles,” said Bob Fellowes, dismissively. “Primus, not secundus.”

It was largely inevitable, on stepping into the American bar at the Alhambra hotel, that one would be accosted by an acquaintance or three. The man who on this occasion had shouted to Algy from across the room, shouldered his way to him through the crowd, and emerged wreathed in thick clouds of tobacco smoke with a grin like Mephistopheles’ tousle-haired nephew, had been his instructor at Hendon. The evening when they had discovered through mutual cross-examination in the local pub that Fellowes had been a friend and contemporary of Charles Bigglesworth at Malton Hall was one of the enduring (though ill-defined) memories of his training, culminating as it did in uncountable and somewhat confused toasts to _Bruderschaft_ and a summary reprimand from the C.O. for attempting to abscond with the pub’s piano.

He had shepherded Algy to a beer-smeared table beside a potted palm, pushed a pint of mild-and-bitter into his hand, and launched with a will on the inevitable and extensive comparing of notes on mutual friends.

“Charles?” Algy asked, as if he could somehow have forgotten.

Fellowes shook his head ruefully. “Never could get used to that. He was always Biggles at school.”

“So was my Biggles,” Algy pointed out.

“I suppose it’s inevitable really, when you’re saddled with such a mouthful of a surname.”

“I didn’t know he was around,” said Algy, meditatively tapping his forefinger against the water-beaded glass. “On leave too, I suppose. Is he well?”

Fellowes grinned. “Isn’t he always?”

“I should look him up,” Algy decided. “Don’t suppose you managed to wangle a card out of him?”

The oddly furtive expression which flitted across Fellowes’ face and the tentative pats to his pockets reminded Algy that if Bob was on typical form he would certainly have dropped it, given it away absent-mindedly in place of his own, or used it as a beer-mat by now. “I _did_. I think he’s on the telephone though, I’m sure you’d do as well by just inquiring with the ‘change...”

It was unearthed eventually, however, sifted from the drift of cigarette papers, unpaid bills, forgotten invitations and pressed leaves which cascaded from his pocketbook. He scribbled the details from the rectangle of grubby pasteboard onto a napkin, seemingly without noticing that it was decent linen, and handed it to Algy.

“Mount Street,” Algy read. “My word, he must be doing well for himself!”

“You know Charles,” said Fellowes, shovelling his possessions haphazardly back into his pockets. “Always lands on his feet.”

* * *

He telephoned the next day from the lobby of his hotel, scuffing his heels back against the skirting board in the narrow alcove and idly watching the other patrons pass him by with polite incuriosity.

“Hullo?”

“Hullo, Charles?”

“Speaking. Who’s that?”

“Algy. Algy Lacey.”

The line was a bad one, making Algy shout self-consciously into deadening corners of the booth; but he could still hear the moment when the cloud of confusion cleared from Charles’ open face and the sun burst forth.

“By James! Algernon Montgomery!”

Algy tipped his head forward, rapping it once, gently, against the white-painted wall. “That’s the one.”

“How the devil are you?”

“Oh, ticking along, you know.”

“The devil you are! Why, it must be – what, six years since I saw you last?”

“Seven, by my reckoning.”

“Managed to get shot of those dreadful knickerbockers yet?”

“Almost. I can get away with only wearing them at weekends nowadays, they don’t go with the uniform. Listen, I’m in London for a few days on leave. I wondered if you had any time to meet for dinner?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for all the tea in China,” Charles’ voice rang out past the crackling on the line. “We must dine at my club. You free tonight?”

“What sort of time?”

“Eight-ish? At the Travellers. Not that there’s any other possible club for the brats of the colonial service.”

“Fine,” Algy yelled back. “Eight it is.”

“First rate!” And he was gone without another word, spirited away into the sudden silence of the dropped connection. Algy replaced the receiver, and stood for a second with his hand on it, as if to regain his breath. Then he shook his head, once, clearing the static from his ears, and grinned.

Charles, apparently, had not much changed.

_”Charles – do be careful!”_

_He had appeared at the day-nursery window in a shuddering of leaves and an explosion of frightened birdsong, swaying amidst the upper branches of the apple tree. He looked across to where Algy stood with his flushed cheeks pressed between the bars of the window, with an expression compounded of pity and lordly disdain._

_“I’ve never fallen from a tree in my life,” he said._

_“I meant be careful mother doesn’t see you,” Algy hissed. “She’d be awfully cross if she knew – “_

_“Oh, don’t worry. She knows I can be trusted. Look, I even changed out of my decent shoes so I wouldn’t scuff them.” He lifted one sock-clad foot from where it had been lodged against a rounded bur, and wriggled his toes in Algy’s direction. When Algy squeaked with alarm, Charles grimaced. “All right, all right. You might at least try not to be such a baby.”_

_“I am not – “_

_“You know, I think we could get these bars clear, if we worked at them properly,” he said, leaning out across the void with the blithe unconcern of his thirteen years to peer more closely at the brickwork. “I could borrow the tools from the gardener – we could play prisoners.”_

_Algy hesitated. “I don’t think we should. We’d get in the most awful trouble.”_

_Charles shrugged. “Please yourself. I’m going fishing anyway.” He scrambled further upwards, along slender grey-green branches which bucked and bowed under his weight. Algy held his breath, eyes wide and heart pounding in his ears, watching him squirm out on his belly, gripping with knees and one negligent hand as he reached out to pluck the first of the young apples from amidst the shivering leaves._

_“Provisions,” he explained when he had slithered down to Algy’s level again, pockets bulging and cheek smudged with powdery lichen, leaves caught in his hair. “Here – reach out – ”_

_Algy put his arm through the bars, lifting himself onto tiptoes and pressing forward until the iron bit deep into shoulder and chest; and he was just able to touch the smooth curve of the apple which Charles held out, as he hung fearless and splendid over the twenty foot drop. Algy delicately walked the weight of the fruit over his fingertips, until it dropped full into his palm. He drew in his hand._

_“Take one for James too.”_

_He did; and the moment the apple was in his hand, Charles disappeared._

_“He gave me an apple for you,” he said, putting it down on the corner of the atlas. James lay on his stomach before the great book, chin on his hands, feet balanced still in the air, crossed at the ankle._

_“Thanks,” he said, without looking up._

_“He said he’s going fishing,” Algy went on, dropping cross-legged to the floor. He peered at the book upside down, but the great shapeless swirl of yellow and brown and spider-web black didn’t look familiar._

_James had constructed a tepee from blankets and a broom handle propped up precariously between piles of books; sun from the skylight fell full on the ivory wool, and the air underneath tasted of dust. “Do you want to go?” he asked._

_“I don’t think I should.” The words were muffled by James’ fists, pressing up underneath his jaw as though fighting with his mouth as to whether they could be allowed to escape his teeth or not. “You can go if you like, I don’t care.”_

_Algy thought for a moment, longingly, of the clear trout-pools of the stream, and of how his mother probably wouldn’t mind him playing there if Charles was looking after him; but then he looked down at his cousin’s thin, bowed back, and thought about what father had said, about how James had been brought up on the other side of the world where there were tigers and rubies and yellow fever. He set his jaw, and picked up a tin solder, brightly painted in green and gold._

_“I don’t believe he’ll catch anything, anyway.”_

* * *

“Good God you’ve grown!”

Algy, who was still fully a head shorter than his cousin and whose hand was engulfed within Charles’ great warm grip, narrowly refrained from rolling his eyes. “I was hardly into long trousers when I saw you last.”

“And I was about to leave for Sandhurst, and far too grand to waste my time with the likes of you.”

“At least I’ve grown out of the Little Lord Fauntleroy curls.”

Charles looked him up and down critically. “Well...more or less. Could still do with a haircut though. And a good damping down and pressing, now I come to look at you. What would your mother say if she saw you going about with your shoes in that state?”

There was something in Charles’ cheerful disregard for the niceties of polite introductions, coupled with his disarmingly schoolboyish grin, which made it oddly difficult to take offence. “I’d like to hope she’d begin with scolding me for joining up without telling her, especially before I got my place at Oxford, and work down from there,” he said, as Charles divested him of his coat and signed them both in. “But sadly I think she probably _would_ start with the state of my shoes.”

“Well, I’m glad to serve as a restraining influence in her absence,” said Charles. “You’re a disgrace to the regiment, or would be if you had one. Come through and have a drink.”

As they walked through to the adjoining room, Algy surreptitiously attempted to tug his tunic straight and to appear at ease; when they sank down into slightly threadbare and sagging armchairs beneath a luminous Venetian vista that might well have been a Canaletto, he tried to make his eyes skim over it with indifference.

“Champagne all right?”

He dragged his eyes down to Charles’ face. “Oh, fine.”

“Might as well be profligate,” Charles confided as the steward disappeared with their order. “They’ve been very good here about not changing the rules regarding members’ bills, even though half the fellows running them up at the moment won’t be around to pay them at the end of the year.” He shook his head. “Very decent, of course, but hardly the way to keep the old place in profit.”

“I suppose if everyone’s running up great tabs then the fellows who _do_ come back to pay them off will be able to see the Club back into the black on behalf of those who don’t,” Algy speculated. “It’s almost socialist.”

“You’d better not let them hear you breathing that word here...”

“Seems a decentish sort of place,” said Algy airily, as he accepted a glass of pale champagne from a tray. “Fancy putting me up for membership?”

Charles barked a laugh. “You’ve got some face! It’ll rather depend on whether you’ve already turned into one of those frozen-faced RFC hounds, entirely tongue-tied unless you’re talking about gas and dope and torque and other things that anyone in their right mind leaves to their mechanic or their science master.”

Algy plastered on his most thoughtful expression. “Well, I could try talking about nothing but bridles and girths and laminitis and other things that anyone in their right mind leaves to their stable-boy, but I’m not sure that’d go down any better over dinner.”

“You see?” Charles asked the ceiling. “Pure face. No one respects their elders these days.”

Algy sipped his champagne (which seemed good, inasmuch as he was in any position to tell), and made himself relax further into the time-softened chair. He crossed his legs, then debated uncrossing them again in order to prevent his scuffed toecaps from being quite so prominently on display.

“Have you heard much from your father?” he asked. “I hope he’s well.”

“Oh, thriving,” Charles snorted. “It always used to rankle with him that his health broke before he could go for his commission. Now they’re finally so desperate they’re prepared to waive whatever medical requirements they may one have required, and he’s frisking like a lamb in springtime. Terrorises his men, eats like an undergraduate, and swears it’s cured his rheumatics. I think I read about him in the gazette about as often as I get letters.”

“I read about you a couple of months back,” Algy said, slyly observing Charles over the rim of his glass. “I meant to write and congratulate you. When’s your promotion confirmed?”

Charles flushed, that uncomfortable and unflattering flush to which men with fair hair and scrubbed pink skin and broad shoulders are prone, which starts at the back of the neck and sweeps inexorably up over the face.He gave a small, slightly ironic half smile, an expression that struck Algy with breathless familiarity. “Oh – whenever they get round to it. They’re much more eager to get the highly-coloured Boy’s Own Paper version out in the gazette than they are to actually get on with regular army business.” He swallowed the last of the champagne in his shallow glass with a single hasty gulp, and pushed himself abruptly to his feet. “Shall we go up?”

The resemblance hadn’t been there when his cousins were young, Algy felt sure; but now he stole glances up at Charles’ face, as he hurried up the carpeted stairs at his side (and he there was something familiar about that too, about taking steps singly while Charles took them by twos: Charles had never taken account of the years and inches between thirteen and seven, only looked back in surprise and exasperation when he fell behind on the walk to chapel), and felt it in an odd throb of half-familiarity. Charles seemed over-emphatic, an over-exposed photograph of a well-know subject: too tall, too broad, his hair too fair and his eyes too definitely blue, the line of his jaw fractionally too square, that of his nose a touch too sharp; his voice deeper, blunt without the whetting of irony, but catching him sometimes with shreds of common inflection.

“How are your family?” Charles asked, when they had got the business of ordering out of the way, and the politesse of sampling the wine. “I got a letter from your mother when you first joined up, of course. I suppose everyone in the family did. Or possibly everyone in the country. She seemed to hold us responsible for you hankering over those glorified flying bedsteads instead of holding out for the nice quiet billet in the War Office she had lined up.”

“It didn’t stop her dumping me on poor Biggles as soon as I was shipped out though, did it,” Algy grumbled. “By George, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more of a worm than when he first caught sight of me at 266. Face as long as a wet weekend in Bala. I think she expected him to look after me, whatever that’s meant to entail.”

Charles laughed. “Anyone would think she’d never met him. James never was one for picking the small fry first for games. I can’t imagine he much went in for hand-holding a raw recruit.”

“Oh, I don’t think he did so badly,” said Algy, lightly as he could, applying himself to his potted shrimps. “I’m still here, after all.”

There was a brief, awkward silence. “Here, I say – I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Algy looked up. “And I didn’t take anything.”

Charles cleared his throat, and set down an emptied oyster shell on his plate with a sharp clink. “Are your sisters well? I never have been able to keep up with what they’re up to.”

“They’re thriving too,” Algy mumbled through his mouthful, then began to number off his siblings on his fingers with taps from his butter knife. “Ida’s just had her second, and was hell-bent on getting me over for the christening until I explained that a trip home would wipe out all my leave, and that if anything went wrong with the trains – as it inevitably would – I’d end up AWOL, and she’d have to share the christening cake with some serious-minded men from the military police. Etta’s still with the ambulance service – their bus got blown off the road by a mortar attack last month, but she only had a sprained wrist and a bad temper from it, so the luck of the Laceys seems to be holding. Elsie and Florrie have turned over the whole garden to vegetables since Evans – Young Evans, you know, not Evans the boot-boy – got called up, and are threatening to inundate me with piccalilli. Poll seems to spend most of her time knitting, to judge by the number of socks she’s sent – I’ve taken to giving them away to chaps from other squadrons, but since she’s still not too keen on turning the heel and tends to leave it as long as possible, they look a bit odd. Cissy’s taken up horses with a vengeance. And – who have I forgotten?” He tapped his thumb with his knife, frowning meditatively, before brightening. “Oh! Yes. Gertie’s fallen in love with a socialist and become a conscientious objector. Mother thinks she’s just doing it to spite her and that she’ll grow out of it soon, but it took her six years to stop calling me Algernon Montgomery just to annoy me, so mother might be underestimating her staying-power.”

Charles’ smile was over-broad, blindingly bright. “It’s a wonder you have any time for flying, you must spend so long answering letters.”

Algy surreptitiously attempted to scrub his greasy fingers clean on the napkin as a waiter cleared the plates. “At least they’ve taken to sending them all in the same package. I just have to spend most of Sunday at it, and then I’m clear to fight the Hun for the rest of the week.”

Charles pushed his cutlery straight, and began to scrape together all the breadcrumbs with which the tablecloth was liberally strewn with the side of his hand; then he absently dragged his forefinger through the neat pile, smearing them into ragged swirls and zigzags. “How’s James getting on? I read about that business at Ramsgate in the papers, of course, but – well, we’ve never really got into the letter-writing habit.”

Algy watched him for a moment, watched the moving finger crushing the crumbs into the white cloth. “He’s brilliant.”

Charles looked up, bright blue eyes fierce. “Really?”

“He’s the best pilot I’ve ever seen,” said Algy, hearing the warmth seep into his voice, seeing as it melted the tension about Charles’ lips. “Which isn’t admittedly saying so very much yet, though I’ve certainly seen enough bad pilots to know what _they_ look like. But there are plenty of fellows in the squadron who’ve been at this game long enough to know, and they think he’s brilliant too. The stories they tell about things he did before I got there – things that never got into the gazette or the papers – and the things I’ve seen him do myself – ”

“Tell me,” said Charles.

And Algy did: at great length, the words spilling out of him, champagne poured too fast into the dry glass, as the grouse and the Jerusalem artichoke and the Chambertin came and went, and he hardly tasted them, eating hastily by fits and starts, gesturing too widely, savouring the way the excitement and the anticipation and the fear and the _pride_ chased each other across Charles’ face. He knew that the technical language of stalls and side-slips and spins would go largely over his head; but Charles nodded through it all, letting the words wash over him with the scent of dope and petroleum and the spray of oil against his face in the freezing upper air.

The wine flowed more freely than Algy was used to, perhaps, and was certainly far better; and in the dimness of the candle-and-gas-lit room, its heavy curtains closed against the dark, it was easy to treat the war as if it were a great shining adventure in the clouds; but more than that, it was Charles’ attention that loosened his tongue.

“Sorry,” he said, as he nibbled a last sliver of stilton from his knife. “I don’t think I’ve done very well at pretending to be a pilot who can talk about things other than piloting.”

“It’s probably not as terrible an offence when your host has been egging you on,” Charles allowed, generously. “Though I’m not sure it’ll have helped your chances of finding a second for your membership application. Come on, we’d better clear out before they throw us out.”

They clattered down the stairs, and when Algy took the turn a little wide he felt Charles’ hand curl about his elbow, warm and steady. “If you were Biggles, you’d make a joke at this point about not being able to turn left.”

“If I were him, I’d be able to understand it,” said Charles, then paused. “Anyway, it’s right.”

“What is?”

“The turn of the stairs.” They stopped in the entrance hall. “Coffee and a brandy?”

“Coffee, anyway,” said Algy, in what he hoped was a tone of sober respectability, though he was increasingly uncertain how he would be able to tell. He had been so intent, before he arrived, on appearing sensible and grown-up in the eyes of his older cousin; but it was difficult to live up to such intentions in Charles’ presence. There was something in his combination of seemingly unshakeable self-confidence and boyish confidingness that made Algy feel light.

“I am, anyway,” Charles said as they seated themselves in the same armchairs they had vacated some hours before. “Biggles, I mean. I was it first, after all.”

“Well, yes,” Algy conceded. “But he was it more recently, you see. And in any case, you never were _my_ Biggles.”

“Do they call him that in the unit – sorry, squadron?”

“Oh, yes. No standing on ceremony in the Suicide Brigade.”

Charles shook his head. “I’d skin any of my men who called me that to my face.”

“But behind your back is acceptable?”

“Behind my back is inevitable,” said Charles, with another off-centre smile. He filled his coffee with gouts of cream, heaps of sugar, and Algy felt no scruples about doing the same. “I’m just glad that with such a ridiculous surname, the nickname largely takes care of itself, and no one troubles to come up with something worse. I’d imagine with Lacey you never know a minute’s peace. They could come up with _anything_.”

“I’m fairly sure the only thing anyone ever calls me is Algy,” Algy replied, working his shoulderblades back into the chair and letting his head drop against the cushion. “Or Algernon Montgomery, if they want to be especially aggravating.”

Charles had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I’m sorry I started that one. I had no idea Gertie would keep it up so long.”

“No one ever has any idea how stubborn Gertie can be,” Algy pronounced. “Still, I didn’t mind it too much when you did it. I was just so terribly grateful every time you deigned to notice my existence.”

“I wasn’t that bad, was I?”

“You were worse,” Algy said gravely. “You were officiously glamorous and offensively good at cricket, and never seemed to get into trouble for anything. I’d have chewed off my left hand at the wrist if you’d asked.”

Charles grinned. “But then you’d have got blood on that wonderful velvet suit...”

It had turned cold by the time they stepped outside, and Algy shrugged gratefully into his coat, feeling the heat of Charles’ hands at his shoulders as he courteously helped him into it. Frost glittered on the ground, thicker with sparks than the clear night sky. He took Charles’ arm, almost without thought, keeping close to that long line of heat, feeling the glow of it like champagne in his fingertips.

“Where are you staying?”

“Claridges,” said Algy, diffidently.

“A poor thing, but mine own,” murmured Charles. “You’re going my way then. Let’s walk, I could do with the exercise.”

“You never used to need an excuse to run about.”

“But I was younger and less dignified then.” Charles paused, noticing the glances which Algy kept stealing at the moon. “Very striking tonight, isn’t it?”

“Hm? Oh. Yes.” It was, a broad orange disk thrusting its shoulders through the thickets of balcony-railings and fire-escapes; it made him uncomfortable. “It’ll be a bad night on the lines.”

“Plenty of light for ranging.”

They strolled up St James and turned on to Piccadilly, in silence for the most part; the streets were quiet, with the occasional omnibus almost the only vehicles, and what people there were hurried with their hats pulled down and collars turned up, as if hiding from the sickly glare. Algy found it hard to tear his eyes away.

“I don’t much care for – “ began Charles, softly, before Algy silenced him with a hissed word and a tug on the arm. Without the ring of their footsteps, even Piccadilly seemed silent; but then, very faint in the infinite stillness, a dull whine.

He felt Charles tense at his side; saw him turn his head, blindly, like a hound baffled on the scent. “Is that – “

Another tug on his arm kept him quiet for a count of ten, as the whine grew deeper, more insistent: from a mosquito’s erratic flight to a cat’s constant purr.

“Are those ours?”

Algy shook his head. “Mercedes engines,” he murmured. His eyes were on the sky, but blankly, unfocused: waiting for moving, for the sudden and momentary extinguishing of the stars. “Gothas, I expect.”

“How far away, do you think?”

“Hard to tell without knowing what the wind’s like up there. If it’s as still as this – a few miles.”

He felt Charles’ shudder. “It’s almost worse here than it is hearing them on the lines. At least out there we’ve got flak to put the bastards off their aim.”

“For all the good that ever did. Come on, standing here is about the least useful thing we can do.”

“Should we head for Mount Street?”

Algy shook his head. “Probably not time. And a fat lot of good it’d do us being there if there was a direct hit, anyway.”

“A fat lot of good it’d do us being anywhere short of a concrete bunker if there was a direct hit.”

“Well, in the absence of that, shall we try for the next best thing?”

They jogged up Piccadilly, eyes dragged back to the stars every few steps, as the noise of engines grew steadily, relentlessly louder.

“Wonder if they’ve got the interceptor squadrons out by now,” Algy said. “That’s where I ought to be – hang leave and all the C.O.s who demand you take it – “

With a flair and a cough, the first of the anti-aircraft arrays began to speak, and searchlights stabbed upwards.

“And if wishes were horses, then it might still be fun to be a cavalry officer,” Charles shouted over the roar. “Algy, we ought to – “

There was a dull, crumpling sound: then a whipcrack of air like a solid blow, and a bellowing blast: and somewhere in it, somewhere in that first blind rush, Algy was launching himself at Charles, slamming him into the entrance of Dover Street tube station. Somehow Charles’ arm was about him, cushioning the back of his head, as they struck together against the wall, staggered, and ran on towards the stairs.

Two flights down they paused, leaning against the wall by the untenanted ticket office, coughing and spitting and heaving great driven breaths.

Through the hand still slung about his shoulders, which now drew him in too close, gripped too tight, he could feel Charles trembling; and when he looked up into his face, limned in the faint light which scattered down from above, he could see him pale and set with rage.

“Filthy cowardly bastards,” he spat, eyes still staring up the steps as though they could pierce to the over-full night skies. “How dare they – how _dare_ they – “

“They’re not asserting a moral right,” Algy snapped. “They’re fighting a war, like us. The only reason we’ll not bombing hell out of Berlin is that we can’t reach it with the big bombers. Yet.”

“They sit up there, safe as houses, casually slinging death at women and children – how can you call that war?”

The walls shook, and fresh plaster pattered from the ceiling, as another barrage of dull roaring explosions roared over them. Algy closed his eyes, ducked his head, trying to keep the dirt from his eyes and mouth, still smelling it, tasting its damp clay.

“I don’t call it anything,” he said, when it was possible to speak again. “I just fight it.”

“The next time I’m in London on leave,” said Charles, shaking his head like a dog to dislodge a lump of plaster caught in his hair – and Algy wondered vaguely at what stage in proceedings his hat had disappeared – “I’m volunteering for an anti-aircraft battery. Better taking pot-shots than doing nothing.” He coughed, wetly. “Do you think we’ll be safe down here?”

Algy shrugged. “Ask me another. If the entrance doesn’t cave in we’ll probably be all right. Depends how many bombs they drop on us.”

The huddled together in the near darkness; and though Algy was slightly, ruefully amused by Charles’ arm around him, as if it would somehow be an adequate shield against falling masonry or German incendiaries, he didn’t try to shrug it off. The simple physical weight was a comfort.

“I hope they don’t get Mount Street,” Charles muttered, after an eternity or so. “I’ve just started to get the place looking decent.”

“I’ll settle for getting out of here in one piece, for starters,” Algy answered. “Then I’ll start plea-bargaining with the Almighty for your bloody flat.”

How long they stood there Algy was not afterwards certain, as the last vestiges of the wine were pumped away by the rush of his heart, and the October chill flushed the warmth from his limbs; perhaps fifteen minutes, perhaps more, as the terrible noise drew away into muffled distance, to be replaced by the minute hissing of thick dust settling, like a heavy fall of snow.

“Thanks for the push, by the way,” Charles said, as the quiet drew in.

“My pleasure.”

“Good reflexes. I suppose that comes from dog-fights.”

“I’m not sure if they teach good reflexes, or just kill those who don’t have them.”

Charles sighed, softly. “I could really do with a smoke.”

Algy sniffed. “Smells clear enough. I don’t think they can have caught any gas pipes.”

“I don’t think I’ll risk it. It’d be a damned embarrassing way to go.”

After perhaps five minutes more, the fire engines passed, with bells and shouting that dropped down from the street like pebbles into deep water. Algy exhaled, shakily, feeling the edge of reaction touch his legs with tremors, and consciously made himself straighten.

“I think we can make a move,” he said.

They crept up the stairs, plaster crackling like frost under their feet, and found that the world above was still curiously intact: there were people emerging from buildings like wraiths from their own tombs, buildings that still stood stolid and unimaginative against the brilliance of the stars, and the silvering gleam of the moon caught white dust in the air. Only to the south, somewhere beyond Greek Park, was the sky reddening.

“Come on,” said Charles. “I think we’re about overdue that brandy.”

His flat was on the second floor of one of the smart red-brick blocks on Mount Street, one of those which combined uninspired solidity with absurd elaboration; and inside it was the same combination, with the apple-green walls and the thick scarlet curtains, the book cases filled with sporting trophies (so easily, so unutterably Charles, from school to regiment, from rowing to boxing, all proud and disordered and undusted) and the cheap paperbacks in heaps on the chairs – thrillers, detective stories, penny dreadfuls of the kind found in every mess in the forces. Some of the furniture Algy half knew, from his grandparents’ old house in the country; all looked worn, used. He stood in the doorway, clenching his hands in the heavy fabric of the overcoat draped over his arm, trying to still the shaking.

“Sit anywhere,” said Charles, drawing the curtains and leaving the white ghosts of his hands in the heavy brocade.

“I think I’ll probably end up leaving a permanent reminder of my presence,” Algy remarked, beating dust from his coat to punctuate the point. “Sure you don’t want to put down a towel first?”

“Oh, these chairs have seen worse.”

So Algy dropped gracelessly onto the couch, relishing the gratifying billow of grey, though how much was due to him and how much to Charles’ lackadaisical housekeeping would be hard to say. He leaned forward, lacing his fingers together, the raincoat across his lap.

“I’ll light the fire in a minute,” said Charles, and Algy heard the decanter ring on the lip of the glass, stuttering and unmusical. “Seems a bit early in the year, but it’s turned perishing cold.”

He put a glass of brandy down on the low rosewood table close by Algy’s right hand, and Algy absently noted the way a ring of moisture ran swift to outline the bottom of the glass against the grain. Charles knelt to rake out the grate, raising a shifting cloud of ash, and began methodically to crush sheets of newsprint between his hands.

“Do you really think we sit up there safe as houses?” asked Algy, idly.

Charles took a handful of kindling from the basket on the hearth, and laid the pieces criss-cross on the bed of paper, like the grating in the whale’s throat. “Sorry about that. I wasn’t feeling at my most level-headed.”

“But do you think it?”

“Algy, it’s been such a pleasant evening – “

“Until it was so rudely interrupted.”

Charles poured a shovelful of coal on top, and waited for the skittering of the smaller pieces down through the heap to cease, before he struck a match and touched it to the paper. Then he sat back on his haunches, fiddling with the draft, as the first smoke-red flame ate greedily into the day’s news. “I’m afraid I do rather,” he said, eventually, and Algy could hear the note of apology in his voice; but he could only see the broad span of his back, a block of darkness. “I know you fellows get killed like we do – I know you...break down like we do. But it isn’t the same. You don’t have to put up with the mud and the lice and the – well. It’s not the same.”

“We get a lot of that,” said Algy, swallowing a mouthful of hand-warm brandy. Cheaper than the wine at dinner – a hint of roughness on the tongue, like the brandy in the mess. “As you said – we still die.”

“But not like us.” The words were bitten off, the sharpness smothered, and Charles rose stiffly to his feet. “When James first decided to try for the Flying Corp – well, nothing, we didn’t know until he’d already signed on the dotted line and been shipped off to Norfolk to learn to – flap his arms in the right way or whatever it is you do. But when we found out I – I half wondered if he’d only done it to avoid the mud. He always did avoid rugby like the plague. He’d always set his teeth against the army, you see, no matter how father chivvied him. And if Malton Hall can’t put a boy straight on the road to Sandhurst, nothing can.” He sighed, pushed a hand through his hair, then grimaced at the mess of brylcreme and plaster-dust. “Christ, I must look a state.”

“Can you really imagine Biggles in the regular army?” Algy scoffed. “He’d be certified or court-martialled in a month.”

“That’s rather my point.” Charles gestured over-emphatically with his glass, and then sucked the spilt drops of brandy from his knuckles. “I went into a regular regiment – my uncle’s regiment, at that, and my grandfather’s – while he decided to slink off to the RFC. No, damn it, I don’t mean that,” he corrected himself, angrily. “But you can see why – well, why I can’t quite think of flying as anything but the easy option. I just wish James didn’t know that.”

He had that same restlessness of motion as Biggles, that same reckless expenditure of movement; but where in Biggles that was pressed small and precise into the rhythmic bounce of a heel as he sat, the swift flight of a hand in conversation, in Charles it was diffuse, profligate: a quick tread from hearth to table to bookcase to couch, where he would stand for a second suddenly uncertain, a hand outstretched to brush with a fingertip before pulling away. Algy watched him from the couch, and felt the brandy touch tingling warmth back into his lips. “Under the circumstances, I don’t think you can exactly blame him for not writing.”

“I don’t,” said Charles. “I don’t think I’d write if I were him. But – even so – I still worry about him. He was always – ” He broke off again, took another mouthful of brandy. “Is he all right? Really?”

Algy considered his words. The coldness was starting to thaw from him, leaving a sort of emptiness, a removal from everything: like the pool of candlelight and conversation in the Travellers’ dining room, but stronger, stranger: as though the shock of the bombing had torn him clear from everyday life, thrown him into these dim, half-familiar rooms in the darkness. “He’s all right. He really is the best pilot I’ve ever seen. The men like him. He takes risks, but not stupid ones. He – I don’t know. He probably drinks too much and doesn’t sleep enough, but that’s par for the course. Sometimes he has nightmares. He doesn’t take leave unless he’s forced to, but nor do most of us.” He smiled, crookedly. “I don’t think he’ll crack before the rest of us.”

“He was so awfully young when he joined up, you see,” said Charles, as if following on from some self-evident train of thought. “Which seems a ridiculous thing to say to you, you’re even younger, but – you always seemed that bit more resilient than him.”

“Oh, I bounce back like an India rubber ball,” said Algy, cheerfully, getting up to pour himself another measure of brandy. “Comes of being thoroughly sat on by six older sisters for most of your life. You’ve got to bounce, or you’ll be flattened.”

Charles turned his empty glass slowly in his hands. Where Biggles’ hands were slim, almost girlish, Charles’ hands were great long-fingered things, a pianist’s stretch with a craftsman’s bluntness. “I sometimes wonder if it might have been better for James if I’d sat on him a bit more often. But he was ill so much, and – “ He chuckled, ruefully. “And his games were so dull. He always wanted to pretend that he was with Stanley discovering the source of the Nile, or Captain Cook in Australia. Or that’s how it seemed to me. He didn’t really seem to _want_ company. And he was so much younger too, and so bloody aggravating. I tended rather to leave him to it, and good luck to him.” He caught himself fiddling with his glass, and strode abruptly up to the side-board to put it down. He spent a moment shuffling about the bottles, glasses, soda siphon, decanters, in a desultory sort of movement that might almost have passed for tidying them.

Algy toed off his shoes, drew his feet up onto the couch and tucked them under him, neat and cat-like and comfortable. He rested his arm on the back, rested his chin on his arm, as Charles walked behind him again, and tracked his movement with his eyes, as the fire darkened the gold of Charles’ hair, dimmed the blue of his eyes, smoothed the uncompromising line of his jaw. He looked younger.

“It’s just that you left such awfully big shoes to fill,” Algy murmured, groping after strands of meaning. “I used to think it was bad enough having to keep my end up as the son, heir and young master after half a dozen girls, but that’s nothing like as bad as being the younger brother of the head of the school _and_ the captain of cricket.”

“I wondered about that,” Charles admitted. “I even asked the Guv’nor whether we ought to send him somewhere other than Malton, but he thought it’d do him good to have someone to live up to. But of course that was the one thing James never troubled to do. He was never interested in the things I was good at. I never could impress him.” He paused. “Which sounds ridiculously petty, now I come to say it aloud. But it does a chap good to have his kid brother looking up at him starry-eyed now and again, and James never would. And for every time I took a wicket against Wrykin, it seemed like he would be off hunting tigers, for heaven’s sake. I was – “ He caught himself, then pushed on with the pale determination of one cutting a lump of shrapnel from his flesh. “I was even jealous of him, you know. When he was so ill – it’s a terrible thing to say, but I was so horribly jealous of all the attention he got. No matter how hard I worked, I couldn’t compare with James who just lay in bed looking pale.” He turned to look fully at Algy, eyes candid, challenging. “Now you’re horrified.”

“Only a bit.”

Charles shook his head. “It horrifies me. Children are monsters. I think I only really realised he was a human being when he was about ten. By which time it was rather too late.”

“I’m not sure you can ever really be horrified by your childhood heroes,” said Algy, slowly. “You never do quite shed that feeling of awe.”

Charles looked startled for a moment, and then smiled that small, crooked, out-of-character smile. “Don’t pretend you were ever awe-struck by me. I knew boys at school whose young cousins used to cling to their coat-tails like barnacles. I hardly saw you from one end of a visit to another.”

“That was always the way with Biggles, though. You always had to pick a side.”

Charles’ smile faded. “And his side was never mine.”

He sat down on the couch beside Algy, and scrubbed a hand over his face with a heavy, weary sigh; then grimaced, and looked at his hand. He rubbed forefingers and thumb together, and Algy could almost feel the graininess catching at his fingertips. “It ought to make more of a difference, all this,” he said. “They’re dropping incendiaries on Piccadilly. You ought to be able either to stop worrying about all these extraneous things, or get up the nerve to do something about them. But really, you just go on as before.”

His voice was light, distant, hardly touched with feeling: familiar.

Algy drew an only slightly grubby handkerchief from his pocket, and knelt up on the cushion beside Charles, his knees pressing against the heat of his cousin’s thigh. “Here, let me,” he said quietly. He reached out, and rubbed the smudge of white-grey plaster from Charles’ cheek.

Charles sat quietly, and his eyes rested on Algy’s face.

He only spoke when Algy paused, the handkerchief balled into his hand, and ran his thumb slow and deliberate over Charles’ cheek, reddened by the scrub of the cotton. “Algy, you don’t need to. I – we’re neither of us at school any more.”

“I know.”

And yet – and yet. He was seventeen, and had run away from school to learn to fly; he was seven, and leaning through the bars of the nursery to take an apple from an outstretched hand; and his cousin was older, taller, captain of cricket and leader of men, even though his brightness was tarnishing every step he took away from the playing fields: and there was something in Algy that wanted to reach out and touch his idol, and something that wanted to push him from his pedestal.

He laid the backs of his fingers against Charles’ cheek. “You can blame the brandy if you like. Or the shock. Or my extreme youth and naivety.”

Charles looked torn: his face too open, too expressive. “Is this what you want?”

 _Almost._ “Yes.”

And Charles covered his hand with his own.

He could taste the plaster in Charles’ kiss, taste the damp clay as his tongue flickered soft against Charles’ lips before they opened to be all swift slickness and heat; he couldn’t taste the brandy on Charles’ tongue more than he could still taste it on his own. He didn’t break the contact between them as he knelt astride his lap, pressing forward against him, hand resting against the rough olive of his tunic with his fingertips against the muffled line of the collarbone and the palm on the warm solidity of his chest.

He felt Charles’ hands come to rest on his hips, too light and uncertain, and he broke the kiss to growl, “I won’t break, you know.”

Charles looked startled for a moment, then grinned. “Pure face. They must have different notions of discipline in the RFC for you to talk to a senior officer like that.”

“And they must have pretty funny notions of discipline in the regular army if you treat your men like they’re woven from moonbeams and morning dew,” said Algy, primly. “Make this worth my while.”

“Irreverent brat...”

Algy _shifted_ , purposefully, letting Charles feel the beginnings of hardness in his cock, startling a hiss from his own lips as the thick fabric burnt. “Then make me revere you.”

Charles’ hands tightened over his hipbones, convulsively, and he allowed a little noise of satisfaction to escape him as Charles kissed him again, a sharper, messier press of lips and teeth. He let his hand drift to the nape of Charles’ neck, curl about the damp heat of it, thumb pushing up to brush the curve of the skull, fingers spreading to touch the strong muscle at the shoulder; and the kiss gentled, gradually.

“How do you want – “ Charles murmured, before Algy nipped at his lower lip, sharply. “We could go through to the – “ Another catch and pull of teeth.

“I’m happy enough here,” Algy said against Charles’ mouth, their lips just brushing with the movement.

Charles’ eyes were wide, his pupils broad and black where Algy’s shadow fell across his face, cutting off the light from the fire; he looked up at him in a way that made Algy shift restively.

“Stop counting my freckles,” he grumbled.

“Sorry,” said Charles, unrepentant. “They’re rather mesmerising though.”

“Ass,” Algy muttered, unbuttoning his tunic, fingers tugging nimbly, impatiently at the concealed fastenings. He shrugged it off onto the floor, yanked his undershirt off over his head, and sat back on Charles’ knees with an expression of challenge. “Do I have to do this all by myself?”

“But you do it so well,” Charles protested. His hands drifted upwards, thumbs grazing over Algy’s stomach and tracing over the lower line of his ribs in a gesture that was first cousin to a tickle; and Algy was on the point of passing an acerbic remark, when he felt those thick, long fingers spread firm and sure up the planes of his back, hot as the fire behind him, urging him forward, and Charles leaned in to press his forehead to Algy’s chest, on the hollow of the sternum. Algy could feel the gusts of his breath, the press of his cheek, the sting of stubble, as he nuzzled against the soft skin; and when Charles’ tongue pressed rough and wet against his nipple, he let his head fall forward, Charles’ hair against his face, the curve of Charles’ ear against his parted lips.

His fingers caught in the rough fabric of Charles’ tunic, but under it he could feel the stretch of muscle across the broad shoulders, trace the curve of the spine, and it couldn’t be comfortable for him to curl forward this way, but he found he didn’t care. He dug his fingers in as Charles lapped at him, soft and liquid, felt the muscles bunch and jump, and wondered distractedly if he could scratch him through the cloth.

He put his hand to the back of Charles’ head again, weaving fingers through the gold curls, ruffling them out of any semblance of order, holding him down and in place; just enough to encourage him, to make him bite down gently on flesh already grown reddened, swollen, sensitive to the point of pain, and Algy’s mouth fell open about his gasping breaths, fine strands adhering to his lips, to his tongue. He squirmed, restlessly, feeling himself harden, and took a fistful of the fabric at Charles’ back, and tugged.

“Take this off,” he demanded, and was almost astonished to hear the words come out commanding rather than needy, desperate. He let Charles straighten, and was about to start work on his tunic buttons when Charles kissed him again. Even kneeling astride his lap his head was on much the same level as his cousin’s, and when Charles licked into his mouth with slow thoroughness he could hardly suppress the soft moan of satisfaction.

It became harder to ignore Charles’ size with the tunic gone: the breadth of his shoulders, the weight of his arms, legacies of the rugby pitch and the rowing eight, were _there_ under his hands, and even kneeling over him he felt surrounded, engulfed, especially when Charles’ hands fanned out across his back once more, then slipped downwards to cup his arse through his trousers. He couldn’t help but let his weight almost rest against that clasp, feeling the fingers dig into soft flesh; he felt spread wide, suddenly, exposed, and even though he was still covered the rub of Charles’ fingers against the seam was enough to make him bite his lip and reach with awkward haste for his flies.

He couldn’t help the soft hiss of satisfaction as his fingers found his cock, but he could still hear the hitch and catch of Charles’ breath, could still see the way Charles’ eyes came to rest on him; and he allowed himself one slow, leisurely stroke.

“I can carry on like this if you like,” he said, hearing the quiver in his voice as he rubbed his thumb tortuously slow over the head, unsure whether it was for his benefit or his cousin’s. “But frankly I could do this in the comfort of my own hotel room – ”

He bit off a yelp as Charles lifted him, bodily, and deposited him without ceremony on the couch, head against the arm and shoulder-blades digging into the heavy brocade, and his hand was still on his cock but Charles was tugging down his trousers, fumbling and fast and so urgent that Algy wondered if they would have torn if they hadn’t already been unfastened. And then he could only catch his breath, caught between a laugh and a gasp, as Charles rested his weight across his legs and covered the sharp angles of his hips with his broad hands, and just _pressed_ his open mouth against one of Algy’s splayed thighs.

“Algy – “ he panted, looking up at him with darkened eyes. “What do you want – please, just tell me – ”

“Anything,” said Algy, and he would thrust up into his own fist only he couldn’t because Charles was holding him _down_ – “Anything you want – ”

He saw Charles nod, distracted and earnest, heard him murmur, “I won’t hurt you, I promise – ” before his head dropped back because Charles’ _mouth_ was on him, and there should have been sunshine and laughter and the scent of orchards, but he’d settle for dusty cushions if he had to –

He lifted his head, feeling the burn at the top of his spine, so he could watch the stretch of Charles’ lips; and the hand which had been wrapped around his cock he raised, to brush feather-light over his cousin’s cheek, feeling the hollowing, then – oh, God – the distant outline of his own flesh as it pressed against the inside of Charles’ mouth. He ran his fingernail over the raised shape, then expelled his breath in a harsh gasp as Charles made an indescribable noise that vibrated through him.

There were still hands on his hips, firm enough to bruise; no matter how he tried to shift, how he wanted to _move_ , he was pinned at the waist: could do nothing but lie there and pant and wait, back arching, one foot pressing against the floor, the other twined about Charles’ leg, desperately seeking purchase.

“Charles, I – I can’t – “

The mouth pulled away at once, and he could almost have sobbed at the loss of the heat, that glorious wet suction; but then one of those strong, calloused hands wrapped around him, and with one hip released he was free enough to buck up into it, coming in hard pulses over his own stomach and Charles’ fist.

Then he felt the warm, soft strokes of Charles’ tongue against his thigh. For a moment he thought he might be cleaning him, licking away the spilt seed; but then he felt the brush against his belly, and when he looked it was to see Charles gathering the pale slickness onto his fingers, only to reach down and spread it slow and languorous onto the thigh which he wasn’t anointing with spit. He moaned, softly, and his legs, still trembling with aftershock, drifted further apart.

Charles’ eyes flickered closed, and he took a shuddering breath. “ _Sebas de meron hagnon ouk epeideso_...” he whispered against the skin.

Algy propped himself up on his elbows. “Are you really complimenting my thighs in ancient Greek?”

Charles flushed – though in truth there was such a hectic colour already in his cheeks it was difficult to be sure if he was actually abashed – and ducked his head to press another wet, open-mouthed kiss to the fine, pale skin. “I always had a head for quotations at school.”

Algy, bonelessly pliant, let himself be arranged onto his front, his sweat-stained forehead resting against his forearm on the arm of the couch, his knees pulled slightly up so he was almost presenting himself for display; and the heat that washed over him when Charles slipped his cock between his thighs was a slow, deep wave. He tightened his legs, and relished the burn of friction, wondering how long it would be before the makeshift lubricant rubbed dry, if Charles would keep him slick –

He whined in his throat as Charles pushed heavy and hot against his back, blanketing him with sweat and movement and the physical press of him. It was too soon, he couldn’t come again so fast, but neither could he lie quiet and recover, not with that hard heat between his thighs, nudging sometimes up against his balls, straining sleek against his crease. One of Charles’ hands was at the back of his neck, splayed over his upper back, keeping him in place; the other was beneath him, sometimes supporting his weight, sometimes running over his skin, flicking too hard at a sensitive nipple, catching on a tacky patch on his stomach, and he was too heavy and too present and everything was too _much_ , and he almost felt that with just a little more he could –

He felt Charles stiffen, felt the hot spurt between his legs, the sudden wetness soothing the chafe of skin against skin, before his cousin eased himself down to lie beside him. His breath was nothing but ragged gasps.

Algy passed one trembling hand over his sweaty forehead, then pried himself up from the cushions sufficiently to collapse on his back, forearm over his eyes. The other drifted lower, almost without consciously thought, and gingerly touched the pool of cooling seed smeared between his reddened thighs. He heard Charles’ breath catch, desperately.

“Algy – ”

“If you apologise, I’ll punch you,” murmured Algy, succinctly. “You may have forty pounds on me, but I’ll have the element of surprise.”

For a moment there was silence; then, somewhat to his surprise, Charles kissed him. Algy opened his eyes, and blinked up at him in the firelight.

“I’m not sorry,” said Charles, smiling very slightly. “I probably ought to be, but you make it very difficult. I can’t exactly convince myself that you were an unwilling innocent I debauched, after all.”

Algy looked up at him: at the blueness of his eyes, the openness of his smile, the irrepressible curls which had lost any semblance of respect for the brylcreme. “A thing of beauty and a boy forever, is that it?”

Charles laughed. “That’s not bad. Don’t try to convince me it’s your own.”

Cheerful, good-natured Charles, with an eye for cricket and a head for quotations; Charles, designed by nature to be a father’s pride, and whom no boy of seven could have helped loving; Charles, who in a few years would run to fat, would marry, retire from the army into the colonial service, and live a life of the quietest kind of contentment, without ever quite managing to shed the slang of schoolroom and army barracks; Charles, who was as far from Biggles as the east is from the west.

Algy felt a rush of almost baffled tenderness.

“I don’t think it’s always easy for the resilient ones, either,” he said, abruptly. “It’s true, I’d much rather be someone who bounces back than someone who – doesn’t – but it can’t be very pleasant, being the one who watches other people come to smash. It doesn’t mean you don’t feel it.”

Charles favoured him with an odd, sideways look. “Look, it’s been rather a long night. Do you mind if we leave the eternal verities until the morning? I can loan you a nightshirt if you want to stay. In fact, I wish you would. I don’t quite fancy the idea of you wandering the streets of London alone at this hour.”

Algy found himself smiling, somewhat crookedly. “Thought you’d never ask.”

**Author's Note:**

> Charles quotes (at an entirely inappropriate moment) from Achilles' speech addressed to the corpse of Patroclus in Aeschylus' _Myrmidons_ ; it translates roughly as 'you did not respect the sacred purity of your thighs', or to continue the quotation in the wonderfully flowery Loeb translation, 'No reverence hadst thou for the unsullied holiness of thy limbs, oh thou most ungrateful for my many kisses!'


End file.
